In a bid to boost industrialisation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has approved the start of preparatory work for developing the Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial Corridor.
The corridor will benefit nearly 40 per cent of the population across seven States and create approximately 30 lakh jobs.
It will cover the States of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. It will pass through the cities of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ambala, Saharanpur, Delhi, Roorkee, Moradabad, Bareilly, Aligarh, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Asansol, Durgapur and Kolkata.
The project will have five metro networks just like Delhi metro, a number of expressways, and even boast of bullet trains. The plan is to develop 8-10 industrial zones along the corridor.
Feasibility study
The Government has constituted an inter-ministerial group under the Chairmanship of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Secretary. Group members will include Secretaries of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Urban Development, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and Ministry of Shipping, besides the Chairmen of the Railway Board and Inland Water Authority of India.
This group will examine the feasibility of setting up the corridor, along with the structural and financing arrangements that would be required to operationalise it at the earliest. The group has been asked to give its report within a month.
The proposed corridor is patterned on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and will use the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) as the backbone. The Eastern DFC extends from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata. Therefore, the Amritsar - Delhi - Kolkata Industrial Corridor will be structured around the Eastern DFC and also the highway system that exists on this route. It will also leverage the Inland Waterway System being developed along National Waterway – 1, which extends from Allahabad to Haldia.